ODT Online Tue, 21 Jun 2016Anger about South Dunedin’s future
By Vaughan Elder
Unanswered questions about the long-term future of South Dunedin and the city’s response to climate change loomed large at a heated public meeting last night. Residents concerned about the risk of flooding during future rain events were among about 170 people who packed the Nations Church for the meeting organised by the South Dunedin Action Group (SDAG) and attended by councillors and senior staff members. Attendees heard about the short-term measures the council had taken or was about to take to ensure South Dunedin’s infrastructure would run at full capacity should there be a repeat of last June’s devastating flood.Read more

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Oh hurrah. What the council has been doing in planning annual expenditure on pet projects in the interests of some private groups, not Core 3-Waters Infrastructure for South Dunedin:

“She said next year the council would invest $5m in South Dunedin’s community hub, $500,000 in a local hockey turf and more money to buy buildings to expand the area’s Gasworks Museum.” (via RNZ)

### radionz.co.nz 8:45 am Tue, 21 Jun 2016
RNZ NewsDunedin council concedes flood worsened by faulty pumping station
By Ian Telfer in South Dunedin
Dunedin City Council has admitted a faulty pumping station made last year’s South Dunedin flood 20cm deeper than it would have otherwise been. The Council made the admission at a rowdy public meeting at the Nations Church last night about the flooding a year ago which damaged 1200 homes and businesses. South Dunedin residents have been waiting for a year for its council to front up for the flooding – and last night it did so en masse. At least eight city councillors, the chief executive and her two deputies were quizzed by 200 locals about what happened last June, and what will stop it happening again. […] But it will take more than [the chief executive’s] words to sort out the ill feeling with residents, who said they felt neglected and betrayed by the council, and especially by Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull. Shortly after the flooding, Mr Cull linked the event to climate change and warned South Dunedin may have to beat a managed retreat. Leaders of the newly formed South Dunedin Action Group accused the council and its leaders of having a secret plan to abandon the suburb and blame it on climate change.Read more

Tue, 21 Jun 2016ODT: ‘Significant benefits’ for city in pipeline
DCC Asset and Commercial Manager Tom Osborn says old cracked earthenware wastewater pipes, mostly laid in the 1900s, have been allowing groundwater to enter the wastewater system, leading to flooding after heavy rain, resulting in overflows. “This also adds to flooding in areas such as the northwest corner of South Dunedin, when pipe flows coming from Kaikorai Valley meet flows from other parts of the city and flatten out, creating a bottleneck effect.”

26 responses to “Mayoral Statement to South Dunedin”

There was a lot of anger at the meeting and even though we were asked not to quite a few people called out during some of the presentations. I can understand that. I murmured with plenty of people around me rather than call out.
What I was surprised about was the forthright claims by the DCC that no way would SD be withdrawn from in the future yet there was an outside consideration of withdrawal. In order to achieve something, you have to make a decision and stick to it until you complete it or are clearly shown you cannot do that.
DCC was strongly taken to task and their task is to fix the infrastructure, not continue making promises that are never fulfilled.
But “SDAG spokesman Ray Macleod finished the meeting by praising some of the council’s short-term measures, but had harsh words when it came to what he perceived as a “green” agenda on the council.”
I totally agree with that part of his speech. I do not know if there is a conspiracy about withdrawal but it is not an impossible consideration as the DCC said themselves.
I am upset for the South Dunedin people (he tangata) as they are the ones who are suffering and by evidence of past DCC behaviour, such as the South Dunedin flood 2015-2016, the cycleways plan, selling of motor vehicles, “climate change” fears/panic and mismanagement in general. [Abridged]

Climates do change. They have done so since the earth was formed and they will do so without any intervention by mankind. Weather events will also happen and they will continue to do so in the future. What this issue is about is that the DCC have, for decades, decided to pour the city treasure into fripperies like the rugby stadium and cycleways while ignoring the basic infrastructure. Like it or not, the DCC have failed to design or operate a stormwater infrastructure to cope with entirely forseeable events. All the bluster after the event is simply to divert attention away from failings by a group of people who seem singularly incapable of governing.

As raymondo12 said, “quite a few people called out during some of the presentations.” Whoever called out towards the end of Mayor Cull’s long essay in Council & self-praise that it was “electioneering” hit the nail on the head. The interminable recital of what had been done and what was – actually there didn’t seem to be much actually promised in definite terms.

Remember before he was elected Mayor and he said he would only support enough further money going to the stadium “to make it work”? At the time it was not finished being built so there was some sense in not leaving it without switches on the electrics and locks on the doors….. but as it turned out that wasn’t what he meant at all, not when you see what’s been happening ever since. Though I suppose you could say he wasn’t fibbing and he’s only chucking money at it in various guises because it still doesn’t work – doesn’t work without being on financial life-support.

The recital of what wonders were going to happen in Dunedin, and particularly in South Dunedin, had much of that “yep, reckon I’ve left enough wiggle room for them not to happen, if that’s more convenient for us” tone, the way I heard it.

Hype, Dunedin voters can’t Afford to vote him back in as Mayor. Perminent retirement at Tarras has sense except for the neighbours disadvantaged by his about face on house platforms within his subdivision. About face(?), I hear you mutter. Snap!

I don’t think there were many votes left to lose among those at the meeting, even before Ray’s excellent speech. I’ll be surprised if there’s not a much higher than usual turnout for this election, in that part of the city and probably all over. We weren’t the only people there because though we weren’t directly affected the appalling situation the flood put South Dunedin in – and the reasons for it and the bullshit excuses/explanations later denied and twisted, and subsequent lack of appropriate response right up to the present day, are sickening, disgusting, shameful.

At last night’s public meeting SDAG chairman Ray Macleod named Cr Aaron Hawkins as one of the greens not to vote for. Cr Hawkins is standing for mayor and will likely split the vote allowing a low quality mayoral ‘outcome’ to take the top job.

Sample tweets from Cr Greenie Hawkins today:

All evidence point to considerable climate risks for Sth Dunedin. Exploiting local frustrations / anxiety to push for inaction irresponsible

The ratepayers have been conned by the bureaucracy and the higher salaries commission into paying wages and salaries that the talents, education performance and experience of the recipients do not warrant.

The ratepayers would not mind the odd error of judgement by the bureaucracy if they were paid according to their abilities. It is the outright rob of the ratepayer that sticks in the craw.

Grow Otago’s comment that people should be selling their houses in South Dunedin is utterly ridiculous. It’s like the flat earth society all over again. Did what “might” happen in 300 years or so prevent settlements from occuring anywhere in the world during that time?
Moreover, Grow Otago is proposing scuppering Dunedin’s economy in a jiffy if large numbers of our Dunedin workforce have to abandon their South Dunedin homes for fire-sale prices – which is what all this talk could cause. Oh, but the sea-monster is coming to get us!
South Dunedin remains part of Dunedin, and as a city, we should all be standing up for getting the run-off problems alleviated, the poor council design issues affecting the dunes and sea wall fixed, and the pumps working properly again. Everything else is just a silly smoke screen. [Abridged]

If I were a greedy grabber of opportunities I’d be standing up shouting those warnings – sell now! Fast as you can! Get out of South Dunedin before the roads are under sea!
Then I’d snap up as many cheap properties as I could leverage, knowing that the highest possibility is that there is a good 50 years ahead which is not bad considering the expected lifetime of your average modern house – great investment! Pay peanuts, hire cheap labour – perhaps some of those South Dunedin people who had been panicked into selling dirt cheap and were now struggling with much higher mortgages – do the places up cheap’n’cheerful and get several good years’ rents out of them before selling them on to someone else who also noticed the sea had only risen a centimetre or 2. Or sell them to the council for more professional sports facilities – they might have reduced the city debt from $600M-odd by then and be ready for another round of shop-till-we-drop splurges.
There’s money in panic!
Money for the scare-mongers, not their victims.

“Mayor of Dunedin” or “Mayor of Some Place In China”? Which is it? I can understand the occasional junket – sort of – but would quite like our community leaders to remain focused on the issues at home instead trying to look important elsewhere. Dave will likely have plenty of free time to visit China shortly and should just hold off till then.

Hello75431 Uploaded on Jan 24, 2011Evermore- Light Surrounding You Lyrics
Evermore is an alternative rock band originally from Feilding, New Zealand, now based in Melbourne, Australia. Evermore started in 1999 consisting of brothers Jon, Peter, and Dann Hume. The name “Evermore” was taken from the Led Zeppelin song “The Battle of Evermore” in 1999. Jon says the trio’s parents were highly supportive of them taking up music, stating “they always wanted us to do something creative…Nothing was too risky.”
The song was released in October 2006. Talking to Warner, Dann explained that “this song is about someone who had all the potential in the world but they didn’t believe in themselves”.

DCC’s “admission” of a 200mm adverse impact on flood levels from the June 2015 Portobello Road pumping station is not new.

That impact is essentially accepted in their November 2015 infrastucture report, and independently assessed in my first peer review. What is being ignored or minimised are the additional impacts of wider maintenance issues (including mudtanks) and the (long-avoided in reporting) failure to utilise the Musselburgh pump station for flood level reduction.

My revised assessment of DCC’s approach during and since the flood is a work in progress as time permits, and should be available by the end of the month, or shortly thereafter. That assessment may also consider some of Mayor Cull’s claims contained in his address presented last evening.

As far as I know, the existence of saline groundwater in the South Dunedin area has never been proved in a conclusive or scientific way. As part of the recent Annual Plan submissions, I suggested that the groundwater near the sand dunes should be sampled for any seawater content. If the concentration of salt is nowhere near that of seawater you would have to assume that very little (if any) seawater is seeping through below the sand and above the volcanic bedrock…. Anyway, the sea level rise on the East coast of the South Island has for many years been about 2 millimetres per year, judging from the tide gauges at Lyttelton and Port Chalmers. There is no evidence of any acceleration in the sea level rise. Therefore, a measured increase in groundwater levels at *more than 2mm per year is probably not due to very slowly rising sea levels. An increase would be more likely to be due to the geography of the area, and possibly the frequency of rain storms in winter being more than the long-term average. The area has substantial hills on three sides. The locals and the council know that a *lot of water streams off the hillsides during rain storms, and very likely contributes to the groundwater.

After reading the full mayoral statement which could be described as more than full of phrases that seem to come directly from any organisation’s spin team lexicon I am reminded of William S, who said – “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”,

Other reasons for the flood depth are becoming clearer. In passing, I understand that not all pumps at Portobello Pumping Station were working on 3 June. The DCC emphasis on the (new) screen, and that particular pumping station is interesting.

Reading Mayor Cull’s speech (put up on ‘What if?’) it seems that he is hanging the lack of decision making on the edicts or outcomes of the effects of ‘Climate Change’.
This of course has developed to look something like a ‘Papal Dogma’ to which the masses have dropped down and worshiped at the alter of.
The outcome is that we are blessed with a Mayor plus a goodly number of councillors as ardent supporters. Due to a lack of intellectual acuity they now rely on advice from all and anyone to confirm that ‘dogma’. This applies also to the administrative staff. High priests of learning like Prof Blair Harris and Jan Wright weigh in without fear or favour, giving solid adherence without so much as an empirical fact to support their contentions. Blind laziness, definitely not science. Blanket acceptance is just laziness on the part of staff and elected members.

Their job is to do the sums themselves (assuming capability) and research some history and available empirical data. Ask themselves for instance, if the Co2 level rises from 250ppm (0.025%) to 400ppm (0.040%) a difference of just 150ppm (0.0150%), would it really cause an apocalypse and the end of the world? Indeed, could it not be seen in recorded history that Co2 content many times higher existed without disaster. Then ask, is the Otago Harbour tide levels register over one hundred plus years relevant? What true data is there indicating sea level rises happening beyond the normal minor effects over the last decades. Don’t simply opt out and pass the ‘buck’ to consultants, many of whom are also converted to the easy ‘CC’ way.

This is the sort of inquiry staff should be making. Refer to true science and engineering, not rely on paid opinions uncorroborated by factual evidence. That way maybe the 2015 floods could be put into perspective and the solutions arrived at by sound deduction, with steps positively taken to mitigate future happenings. If they are unable to do this, then the question, is why are they here?

But as long as we have this pseudo intellectual approach by mayor, council and staff, the citizens of South Dunedin are held to ransom by dithering, mindless procrastination and stupidity. We have the likes of mayoral aspirant Cr Aaron Hawkins ‘twittering’ on about “deniers” and talking up the “green’ mantra. Just mindless “twittering!”

There seems to be a bit of argument confusion here. The Greens are right in that sea level rise (and fall) occurs and that the projected sea level rise in the next 100 years is modest in historical terms. A one metre sea level rise would put a good deal of South Dunedin below sea level.

However, this does not necessarily mean that it would be flooded. The lowest point of the Taieri, near the airport, is already 1.5 metres BELOW mid tide sea level, a large part of the plain lies below mean mid-tide level to a lesser extent and it is relatively dry in those places – both now and during the big rain. However, were the pumps to stop running Lake Waihola would be a great deal larger then it is now, with the airport open only to flying boats. The difference is that, luckily for those that live there including me, the drains and pumps on the Taieri are maintained by the ORC, not the DCC.

The sole issue here is that the DCC failed to upgrade and maintain its drainage infrastructure to a level that was able to deal with water falling from above, not rising from below, during the short term event known as the ‘Big Rain’. A fact that they now have been forced to acknowledge. However, at the time an unrelated long term process, sea/ground water level rise was identified as the cause, leading to the claim that reliable drainage of a large area of South Dunedin was impossible under any reasonable circumstances, thus masking these short term deficiencies.

If several well connected and knowledgeable people outside of the DCC had not worked very hard to make that position untenable, then it is perfectly plausible that the ‘Davy Jones is a-comin’ to claim King Edward Street right speedily’ line might still be an apt description of the DCC’s official position today.

This position might well have offered opportunity to well-connected speculators within and beyond the community, disaster directly to many ordinary citizens in South Dunedin, and considerable further indirect costs to the remainder of the community and beyond – a massive cash transfer ‘upwards’ (fiscally not morally) of the usual type in other words. As has been noted before, it has been well learned in some quarters of this country via Christchuch’s continuing calvary that major disasters offer large economic stimuli that are extremely profitable (for some).

Had these knowledgeable people not put in such noble spade work to undermine Davy Jones, then it is possible that even the rudimentary remedial maintenance actions to the drainage that have been undertaken since by the DCC would not have eventuated. Davy Jones, after all was the main driver of the absolutely eye-popping ‘knackered and leaky drains are actually a good thing’ argument put forward at the time, in that as Davy Jones rose around them, their suppurating porosity offered an opportunity to suck him down and in through their gaping cracks and then presumably deliver him up to the (blocked) pumping stations!

Had nothing been done, the consequential inevitable series of further serious surface floods occurring in South Dunedin over a relatively short time period could have been taken as strong reinforcement for the further peddling of the ‘Davy Jones is a comin’ to King Edward Street right speedily’ story.

As to the ‘managed retreat’ idea? Well, retreats of any type are hard to manage, once the line has been breached. Even with good leadership, they have a habit of turning into routs. With the civic leadership that’s currently in place here – Hmmmm…. This flood did at least clearly demonstrate that the civil defence arrangements made by the DCC to protect its citizens appear to be functionally non-existent. This is an important observation that all citizens should take note of, and use as a basis to prepare for themselves and their dependents accordingly – Remember New Orleans? In any rout of course, it is always the weak and vulnerable that get trampled.

That’s the issue. Including a general discussion of the now debunked applicability of climate change/sea level rise to this short term event, and the related (non) activities of the DCC that relate to it, merely acts as a distraction that some will speedily take advantage of.

Rob mentions the area near the airport on the Taieri is below sea level. Rumour has it that a new site for the airport is being investigated up at MiddleMarch and the fundraising that is going on to secure the Hyde Railway station is really to secure the Hyde Railway station building. With plans to move it down to the new MiddleMarch site for the new airport terminal building. This decision making process was brought about by Government appointed commissioners rather than Councillors as a money saving exercise. A public forum is expected to debate the issue after the next election.
PS. In the meantime some Strath Taieri community board members have requested LTNZ to eliminate the double yellow no passing lines on the Outram to Middlemarch road to give an illusion that the faster you go the shorter the distance.

The other thing is time frame. IF CO2 and sea level stats are correct now, how long is it responsibly estimated till their rate of change accelerates?
How long are low-lying populated areas (and they differ around the world, some being regularly flooded for generations yet never abandoned) expected to be in need of regular maintenance of services?
How about looking at the logistics of putting time, money and effort into relocation plans, versus getting on with fixing the [hu]manmade risks posed by weather events, the same old climate/weather that gave us well documented floods for as long as we’ve had this place now called “Dunedin”.

Rob Hamlin: I disagree with some of your assumptions, but agree with your conclusions. You say The Greens are right in that sea level rise (and fall) occurs and that the projected sea level rise in the next 100 years is modest in historical terms. A one metre sea level rise would put a good deal of South Dunedin below sea level..

— The Green view of sea-level rise is that it always goes up and that the latest prediction is much worse that has been previously predicted. The DCC policy is for about one metre of rise in the next 100 years. This is huge and greatly exaggerated.

— South Dunedin is about one metre above mean sea level, so with one metre of sea-level rise there would be soggy lawns and some puddles. By the way, at the officially established rate of sea-level rise of 1.3mm/yr, it would take many centuries to reach that level. See Hannah+Bell (2012) for details Regional sea level trends in New Zealand

— It is interesting that large parts of the Taieri Plain lie below mean sea level. The reason that these places are not part of a lake is not because the ORC maintains the water table at an artificially low level, it is because those parts are not connected to the sea. Soil is a barrier to water flow so the mean sea level will have no significant effect except close to the shoreline. My (unskilled) guess is that sea level has an effect in the first 100 to 200 metres only (depending on soil type).

— The DCC certainly has acknowledged some of the problems they caused, but as far as I can tell, they still maintain that high groundwater before the rain was a major factor (clear evidence refutes that) and they maintain that the rainfall was a very severe 1 in 66-year rainfall (or more) whereas it seems more like it was a 1 in 25-year event. And, of course, the official position of the DCC is that now-days all extreme weather is caused by global warming. There is no evidence that Dunedin’s weather has become more extreme. The ORC has established that there has been no significant rise in South Dunedin’s groundwater level over a period of several years, but the DCC will promote the exact opposite.

The DCC must know the very damaging effect of their “managed retreat” rhetoric. I bet they know that they can turn South Dunedin into a economic disaster area over many years by hammering away at their alarmist comms plan. They don’t need a managed retreat, as such, when they can torment the population and thereby gradually discourage new buildings and new investment and possibly actively prohibit new buildings. They seem desperate for a ritual sacrifice and the damage is happening now. We should put a stop to it.

“The DCC policy is for about one metre of rise in the next 100 years. This is huge and greatly exaggerated.”
This is something that puzzles me. To go from 1.3mm (consistently) to a rate resulting in 1 metre deeper 100 years from now, there has to be a start of, and rate of acceleration of rise. But nobody seems to say when it will start accelerating, nor what the intermediate stages are, nor when. What shape will the graph be, supposing it starts the moment the ABs v Wales match finishes on Saturday? Will it continue flat at 1.3mm for a week, a year, a decade….. and after that will the graph line be straight till it reaches 1 metre, or will it be a gradual curve so that by say the 40 year mark the rise is 20cm then rising faster and faster till the 1 metre mark is reached?

This is not nit-picking. If I plant black walnut trees for high class timber I have a different time-frame to consider than if I plant berry fruits. Do we look for a suitable section and prepare to move our (currently solid) house, or do we think in terms of a small ownership flat for our old age when we can’t manage a garden, and do only such bare minimum maintenance on our house in a low-lying area that is necessary to keep it liveable till the water rises too close for comfort?

Scare stories about what *will be* the situation in 100 years are no help, unless for Scare Prophecy Fellowships. Heck, they don’t even say if the situation in 100 years will have been that way already for 10 years – faster acceleration of sea level rise – or been higher and are on their way back down……..